SOURCE: "Simmel," in Studies in Intellectual Breakthrough, University of Massachusetts Press, 1979, pp. 35-49.

In the following excerpt, Axelrod examines how Simmel perceived the tension between the individual and society and analyses Simmel's writing style as reflecting his intellectual strengths and limitations.

[Thomas] Kuhn characterizes scientific paradigms as achievements which provide new orientations to one or many areas of scientific work, and which isolate limited sets of problems to be investigated and limited ways of formulating those problems. When a sector of the scientific community accepts the authority of a paradigm, says Kuhn, members' attention is directed solely toward that set of problems that the paradigm defines. At the same time, that particular sector rules as illegitimate or uninteresting all work that does not proceed from the paradigm. Thus while the scientific community awakens certain possibilities among its members, it also restricts—even hides—other possibilities.…

Kuhn shows how...